What the Busiest Awards Season Week Yet Tells Us About the Oscars, from the Spirits to New York Critics

At this stage, the guild and Oscar voters haven’t seen much. They’ll be catching up over the holidays. What matters to all those well-paid awards campaigners is what they watch. Gone are the screener piles of yesteryear. Now, it’s the various guild and BAFTA and Academy portals, which still don’t have everything, as many distributors prefer to get their voters out to screenings.

The New York-centric Gotham Awards (touting mainly indies) and the National Board of Review (mainstream), and the New York Film Critics Circle‘s highbrow winners mostly offer titles to sample. These idiosyncratic groups are far from predictive. The Indie Spirit nominations show strength for “Anora” (Neon) and “Nickel Boys” (Orion/Amazon/MGM). The Spirit winners are quite predictive.

Pay heed to the more mainstream AFI top 10. This national jury is a mix of critics, academics, and industry insiders. They don’t always get all 10 Best Picture nominees right, but they come close.

Here’s where we are. The likely Best Picture Oscar contenders include, in order of likelihood:

“Wicked” (Universal; AFI, NBR Best Film and Director plus a “Spotlight Award” for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande)

“Anora” (Neon; AFI, six Spirit nominations, a Best Screenplay NYFCC win, Breakthrough Performance Mikey Madison and Top Films placement at NBR)

“The Brutalist” (A24; AFI, Best Film and Actor Adrien Brody wins at NYFCC, a Brady Corbet Best Director Spirit nomination)

“Conclave” (Focus; AFI, plus Best Ensemble and Top Films placement at NBR)

“A Real Pain” (Searchlight; AFI, a Kieran Culkin Supporting NYFCC and at NBR, plus Top 10 Films at NBR, and a Screenplay nomination at the Spirits)

“Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.; AFI)

“Emilia Pérez” (Netflix; AFI, in a rare deviation from that jury mostly sticking to American films)

“Nickel Boys” (Orion/Amazon/MGM; AFI, Best Feature and Cinematography Spirit nominations, a Best Director RaMell Ross Gotham win, Best Director and Cinematography wins at NYFCC)

“A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight; AFI, plus Supporting Actress Elle Fanning and Top 10 Films from NBR)

“Sing Sing” (A24; AFI, Best Feature Spirit nomination, Gotham wins for Outstanding Lead Performance Colman Domingo and Supporting Performance Clarence Maclin, plus Adapted Screenplay and Top Films placement from NBR)

While “A Different Man” (A24) won Best Film at the Gothams, that was a solo mention, and the film may not be seen by enough voters to register in the Oscar race. “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street) won Marianne Jean-Baptiste Best Actress at NYFCC and Original Screenplay for Mike Leigh at NBR, but it’s hard to imagine a Best Picture nomination for this relentlessly intense small movie. And Mubi is mounting a strong Actress campaign for Demi Moore for “The Substance,” which landed Spirits nominations for Moore and Best Feature. That’s where the body horror flick will perform best.

‘A Different Man’Matt Infante

“Gladiator II” (Paramount) made the NBR’s Top Films list and could rack up some craft nods over time, but it is losing momentum and is unlikely to score in any major categories.

Left out of all these groups are the following also-rans which could pick up needed support from the Golden Globes, SAG, and other guild awards, BAFTAs, and European Film Awards: “Maria” (Netflix), “The Room Next Door” (Sony Pictures Classics), “Blitz” (Apple TV+), “The Last Showgirl” (Roadside Attractions), “Challengers” (Amazon/MGM), and Paramount’s “September 5.”

Among the actor contenders, several others got boosts: the NYFCC gave Carol Kane Best Supporting Actress for New York movie “Between the Temples” (Sony Pictures Classics); the NBR gave Best Actor to Daniel Craig for Top Films-listed “Queer” (A24) and Best Actress to Nicole Kidman for NBR Top Films-listed “Babygirl” (A24).

Among the contenders for Best International Feature, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Neon) won NBR, and while it was not submitted by India for the Oscars, “All We Imagine as Light” won NYFCC and Gothams. Among the documentaries, even without a distributor, “No Other Land” won the Gothams and NYFCC, while NatGeo’s “Sugarcane” took NBR.